Larry Coker writing a new chapter at UTSA

He saw it in 2001 when he led an undefeated Miami Hurricanes team to a national championship over Nebraska in theRose Bowl.

He witnessed it in 2009, when he was named coach at the University of Texas at San Antonio, a school that had no previous football program.

He will witness it again on Sept. 3, when his UTSA team takes the field at the Alamo Dome against Northeastern State.

"We are selling the dream and kids have bought into it and they came and joined," Coker said.

A dream to build a football program from scratch. No facilities, no coaching staff, and most of all, no players. That dream began with Director of Athletics Lynn Hickey who wanted to bring football to the 30,000-plus campus in South Texas.

All she needed was a coach.

Enter Coker, who had spent close to four decades in the coaching ranks. He talked with Hickey and saw possibilities. Possibilities that led him to reach out to a former Miami coach.

"I had an opportunity to talk with Howard Schnellenberger and of course, Howard was at Miami before I was, but he started the program at Florida Atlantic and he was really sold on doing that," Coker recalls. "I really bought into doing that."

"Where I am in my career, I'm not really into it for a quick fix or maybe get some other job," Coker added. "I felt like I was at the point in my career that this would be something I would really like to do and hopefully leave a positive legacy."

With that, Coker began work on building a program from the ground up. He hired a coaching staff and began recruiting for a program that had no facilities on campus. He sold the dream to kids all over the state of Texas, telling them they would have a chance to start right away. No sitting on the bench behind much older, experienced players.

"They know they are going to get coached every day and they are going to get a chance to play right away," Coker said.

The pressure of building a program from scratch is nothing compared to the pressure the 63-year-old felt during his previous head coaching job.

"It's a different pressure," Coker said. "I think at Miami … if you won the national championship , you've done what you were suppose to do. If you lose a game, and don't win the national championship, you're a bad coach. That's kind of an overstatement but it really isn't."

"The pressure here is different from the standpoint that its not to win a national championship but to make this thing work for these people who are so hungry and so in to it," Coker added.

UTSA fans are hungry for it. The teams first game at the 65,000 seated Alamodome is close to being a sellout with the Roadrunners playing its first year as an independent in the Football Championship Series. Next season, UTSA moves up to the Football Bowl Series and joins theWestern Athletic Conference.

Are national titles far off for Coker?

"We're not selling a national championship here or first-round draft choices," Coker said. "We are selling the building of a program, we are selling the idea of making history."

mmurschel@tribune.com or 407-420-5719. Read his blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/collegegridiron365.

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